Markus Vinzent's Blog

Thursday, 12 February 2015

Meister Eckhart, Parisian Question IV - a much neglected text

In preparation of a contribution to the exhibition catalogue on 'Taery Kim, Performing Space', a contemporary video artist who is inspired by and interprets Meister Eckhart's understanding of Space and Time, I had to study the fourth of Meister Eckhart's Parisian Questions, unfortunately a much neglected text in Eckhart research. Nevertheless, it is an important witness for Eckhart's radically new understanding of 'space' compared to those to whom he refers, his teachers Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, opening up their concept of a closed container space which provides the place and location for things, and re-conceptualising it as an open space to be, a transcendental and universal space where everything has its non-categorical place and location - or rather where there is no given place, but where place is dynamically understood as space and space as a continuum of dynamics. This he details in his Exposition of Genesis (In Gen.I n. 49 [LW I/2, 220,1-221,6]), and exemplifies in the following Question which I give with text and my own translation:

◊1◊ As it seems, no, since motion without end can be
found, such as the motion of the heavens.

◊2◊ The counter-argument: The end of motion is still
motion. Who, therefore, negates the end [to be motion], negates motion
[itself].

◊3◊ One has to say that it implies a contradiction,
because something does not attain to be moving, unless it is being moved.
There also would be power without action.

To the argument about the motion of the heavens, one
has to say that the end, from which the heavens are moved, is disregarded.
Therefore, speculation remains about the end, within which and towards which
they are moved.

◊4◊ With regards to the end, within which something is
moved, it is the subject of motion, and this is the first mover. The first
moving body, therefore, is the first body, because the first body is less
powerful and consequently less motion; insofar as it is the first mover, it
has the least motion. What is perfect differs from what is imperfect, but to
be moved is called an imperfection. Accordingly, the more perfect something
is, the less motion and location it has, and because the heavenly body is the
first perfect one, therefore it is least moved and located, but moves all
things and locates all things. Whereas the earth locates nothing, the water
already more, and thus in an increase [the heavenly body] has the least
motion, because it has alone the spatial motion, namly solely its ‘where’, as
it is neither from something else, nor to something else, unless notionally.
Similarly, it is one motion, although moved in [its] parts, [but] not through
its centre; for it is the prime mover by the immovable which is in it,
because this constitutes its perfection. Therefore, it needs to move in
itself, not in its centre.

◊5◊ And if it is argued: The parts have potential being,
one has to say that the argument proves its opposite. Because the fact that
they potentially are, moves them, because motion is the act to be of
something that potentially is. And the cause of mutability and immutability
in all things are the total and [its] parts; because what has full being is
immutable, such as God, but all those who have a part of being, are mutable.
And this Thomas states in the Question
On Evil, in the article on demons, question two, in the solution of that
argument. So the heavens is moved through [its] parts, because it is the
first [mobile body], wherefore it has only one motion, a uniform one, from
which follows that it has no contrary [motion]. The astrologers, however,
assume therefore that it was not the prime mover, because they discover in
the heavenly constellation a deformation.

◊6◊ In olden times, however, the end to which motion of
the heavens was said to be the generation and passing-away of those inferior
things. Yet, one has to say that, in its own motion, the heavens strive for
the same as matter does. Because what has no total being, but parts [of it],
therefore strives for all forms: Thus, as the heavens has quantity, it has
parts, and because it has no place, it strives for it: therefore it is moved
so that it receives the ‘where’ of all parts, be they right or left.

◊7◊ Or one could say that the heavenly body is the
supreme one. However, it is the nature of the superior to infuse and give
being, and it is the nature of the inferior to strive for being; and it is
the nature of the superior that it be present to all inferior ones, namely
itself as a whole and itself in whichever way possible to the inferior as a
whole and to each of its parts; and because this cannot be done in one go, it
therefore infuses the inferior successively.

What, then, is its end? One has to say that it does
not strive for anything else for itself, as neither does the eye see for
itself, but for the whole [body], as it has being with regards to the whole
and itself wholly for this end. Thus also, the end which the heavens strive
for in motion is the being of the universe or the conservation of the
universe.

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About Me

I am passionate about history, philosophy, late antique and medieval theologies, the way our current world came about, and how to understand it, in order to shape it for future generations. The role of religions seems to be paramount for a global success of a harmonic living together of people of different wakes, life-styles, cultures and ambitions. Please do join this blog, as it gives insights into my research and the questions that occupy me.